To Breathe a Sigh or Two
by Cascade Waters
Summary: Gift ficlet for senbonzakura.


To Breathe a Sigh or Two 1/2 - for senbonzakura77

by firechild

Rated T (for angst)

Disclaimer: They're not mine. The title is borrowed from Sarah McLachlan and Gordon Lightfoot.

Genre: angst, romance (dark)

Pairing: gw/hp

Warning: AU post-series (and I have not read DH, so this is precluding whatever happened in the last book)

Word Count: 792 (part 1)

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I rest my head against the cold, rotting wood of the under-sink cabinet, wondering how much time I'll have to rest here before I'm able to take some more medicine. Foul-tasting stuff, Muggle anti-nausea syrup, but it helps... sometimes. I miss the Magical world with its healers now more than ever, though I know that there's nothing any of them could do for me now--I'm too far gone already. Some days I'm sort of functional, and some days, like today, I can barely move for the sickness. My joints ache, my head is pounding, I just want to sleep all of the time, I can't seem to get warm no matter what I do, and I know that if anyone here could see thorugh my Muggle-made disguise to the real me, they'd find me pale and wan under my freckles, my green eyes grayed and my red hair dull. What they do see is a young woman with artificially brown eyes and a dyed dishwater bob and a light bottle tan, a bit ditzy, somewhat inept, and thoroughly mundane. When they remember that she exists, they think her name is Amy because that's a very common name in this part of New York; they think that she's from Alabama just in case a hint of accent slips through when she speaks.

But I'm not Amy-the-twit. I detest her. I abhor having to pretend to be her. I deplore that I've suddenly had to become an actress, playing a role I can't feel in a production I can't control, with a script I can't read. I loathe every hour of the past two months, alone in this world where everything that I am is nothing but a fantasy, a two-dimensional farce, like something from the pages of some children's book. I despise this life that's not a life, this existence split between an empty mockery of a public smile and curling around the private emptiness inside. I can't stand being so far from everyone I know even as I remember that only by staying as far away as possible can I protect them. I hate this, and I know that I would do it all again, a thousand times over, for him.

I know I should shy away from thoughts of him, but just now, alone, shivering, with my stomach roiling again and my defenses in shreds, my mind plays with the place where he'd been, like a tongue toying with the tender hole left behind by a lost tooth.

Even now, it seems like a bad episode of one of those television serials he and my father liked so much. How could such a simple mission have gone so magnificently wrong? Yes, we'd known there would be risks; we'd even a plan in place, at his insistence--I'd thought he was indulging his dramatic side, but he wouldn't let me out of his sight until I promised that if his undercover foray to catch a former Death Eater posing as a sweet shoppe clerk in Kent went wrong, I would disappear, I would change my look, my name, I would become someone else entirely and get as far away from home as I could manage. He even had a cover story in place to fake my death while a couple of the old DAers cleared the Burrow and stood guard until whomever had marked him had decided that I really was worm food. Really, the whole thing had seemed so silly; he was running a long-term stakeout on peanut brittle and treacle tarts, for bludgers' sake. He was posing as a copper-for-hire, using his 'job' of keeping order in the shops to gather evidence that the Death Eater was both drugging Muggles and passing magically-obtained tactical information about the Muggle defenses to someone in the wizarding world. It wasn't supposed to be all that dangerous, but my husband is... was... a firm believer in preparedness. So we had a plan, but mostly we lived like everyone round us, magically cloaked so that the Muggles thought we were just Dan and Bonnie, the newlyweds just moved from Coventry. He pretended to keep the peace, I pretended to be a writer, and we were genuinely content.

And then one night he didn't come home. I went looking for him, and in the alleyway behind the sweet shoppe, while the real police were investigating what looked to them like an explosion inside the store, I found his wand, half-burnt, and, half-melted, the chain I'd enchanted for him, the one he never took off, the one that appeared to be just a chain but was in truth made from tiny silver letters that spelled out "the king of my castle" over and over again, and then I knew.

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End file.
